{"title":"Can Law Manufacture a Party System? The Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands Experience with Party-Strengthening Legislation","authors":"Jon Fraenkel","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12931","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ajph.12931","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Two western Pacific states — the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea (PNG) — experimented with unusual and ambitious reforms aimed at strengthening political parties in the new millennium. In this paper, we look at what those laws entailed and how they worked in practice. In both cases, we find that unforeseen repercussions dominated. In PNG, the new laws encouraged candidates who formerly contested as independents to now nominate as members of microscopic one- or two-member parties whereas in the Solomon Islands many formerly party-affiliated candidates adjusted by contesting as independents. In PNG, the law was one of a range of devices aimed at strengthening incumbent governments, but money politics and manipulation of parliamentary procedure proved more significant. Core anti-defection provisions in the new law were ruled unconstitutional in 2010, but other still valid clauses preserved an advantage for the “largest party” in government formation. In the Solomon Islands, the law created a shadow world of free-floating individuals able to switch at liberty between formally constrained hermit crab shell parties. In neither country did these laws succeed in strengthening party systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":"70 3","pages":"513-531"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajph.12931","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140487220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Civil-Military Bargaining in Early NATO Institution Building: The Long Shadow of Institutional Beginnings","authors":"Darrell W. Driver","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12930","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ajph.12930","url":null,"abstract":"<p>NATO's unified command structure affords the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff influence in transatlantic foreign and security policy unparalleled with any other region. This, as Stephen Saideman has argued, is a function of the central role the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) plays in Alliance decision-making. This paper explores the early development of this decision-making structure. It is argued that the structures, norms, and rules that advantage US military advice in transatlantic security and foreign policy were a function of domestic US civil-military and international bargaining in the early development of NATO institutions. In exchange for supporting new US commitments in Europe, uniformed Pentagon leadership insisted on German rearmament and a key set of provisions in the development of NATO military structures and institutions that ensured US military leadership, especially regards the duties and responsibilities of SACEUR.</p>","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":"70 3","pages":"495-512"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140489580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Australian Foreign Policy Stability and Instability: Imperial Friendships and Crises from the Great Depression to the Fall of Singapore","authors":"Wesley W. Widmaier","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12950","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ajph.12950","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Over the past century, crises have enabled the construction of Australian foreign policy orders, or sets of ideas that reduce uncertainty and stabilise interests. However, such ideas have also engendered misplaced certainty and renewed crisis. Developing a constructivist framework, I stress the ways in which ideas can over time impede the use of information and fuel instability and crises. In a staged model, I trace the <i>construction</i> of ties with “great and powerful friends”, their <i>conversion</i> in ways that fuel misplaced certainty, and the construction of <i>crises</i> which advance change. Empirically, I then trace the construction of an early Imperial order, misplaced certainty in UK-backed austerity and appeasement, and crises in the Great Depression and fall of Singapore.</p>","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":"70 3","pages":"532-547"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajph.12950","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140487300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Kerguelen Archipelago and Australian Security Anxieties","authors":"Alexander Mitchell Lee","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12951","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ajph.12951","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Kerguelen archipelago in the Southern Indian Ocean was never militarised and never posed a realistic naval threat to Australia or the British Empire during the twentieth century. However, there were two episodes, once in the Federation Era and during the Second World War, when there was debate within Australia as to whether this outlying French possession posed a threat to Australian security. By examining these periods of Australian anxiety surrounding the Kerguelen archipelago, it becomes possible to see that these concerns were more reflective of Australian strategic angst than any tangible threat posed by a remote, unpopulated, nominal French possession. This episode is an example of a broader Australian angst in the early and mid-twentieth century that remote colonial possessions could be weaponised to isolate Australia and threaten it. The Kerguelens represent one of the most peculiar examples of the manifestations of Australian strategic insecurity.</p>","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":"70 3","pages":"459-476"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajph.12951","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140491725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vladimir Petrov: A Reappraisal","authors":"Phillip Deery","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12943","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ajph.12943","url":null,"abstract":"<p>During the Cold War, defectors from the Russian Intelligence Services to the West were of critical importance. They exposed and neutralised hundreds of Soviet agents who had penetrated government departments and democratic institutions. Stretching from Anatoli Granovsky in 1946 to Oleg Gordievsky in 1985, these Soviet defectors were highly prized for the intelligence they provided to security services. Ranked amongst the most valuable at the time was Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov, who defected in Sydney in 1954. Yet he, almost alone, has overwhelmingly been cast by commentators and historians as lazy, inefficient, and incompetent. This article will offer an alternative interpretation of Petrov. My argument has three prongs. First, Petrov's contact with Russian individuals and pro-Soviet political organisations in Australia was far more extensive than generally assumed. Second, contrary to the historiographical consensus, he withheld intelligence about his contacts and informants from his security service debriefers. Third, rather than Petrov seeing espionage as too dangerous, as suggested, he was a committed and active Soviet intelligence cadre. By reappraising Petrov, the article seeks to provide a fresh understanding of this key episode, the Petrov Affair, in Australia's Cold War history.</p>","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":"70 3","pages":"441-458"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2024-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajph.12943","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139448252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decolonising Australia's International Relations? A Critical Introduction","authors":"Alexander E. Davis, James Blackwell","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ajph.12947","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Australia's international relations (IR) discipline has a deep colonial history, but has never been through a conscious process of decolonisation. Although discussions of decolonising IR have taken place elsewhere, the discussion in Australia is in its infancy. This collection examines the possibilities for decolonising Australia's IR in the present moment, looking at its teaching practice, its research, its styles of analysis, and its relationship with Australian foreign policy. We consider what is particular to Australia's settler colonial context, what is achievable, and what is not. The collection also seeks to develop a new style of anti-colonial foreign policy analysis in Australia, looking at the relationship between colonisation, settlement, and foreign policy. In this introduction, we first look over debates on decolonisation elsewhere in the field. We then examine the historical background of Australia's IR discipline, and look at Australian Indigenous diplomacy, to consider what is specific to Australia's context. We conclude by looking over the contributions of the papers in this collection, and consider what a decolonised Australian IR might look like. Ultimately, we argue that any process of decolonisation will be extremely difficult, and that decolonisation in Australian IR should be perceived as an ongoing struggle, rather than an endpoint in itself.</p>","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":"69 3","pages":"405-421"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50121033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review Essay: Recent Histories of Water in Australia","authors":"Kylie Carman-Brown","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12933","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ajph.12933","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":"69 3","pages":"562-567"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50155406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Australian History Industry. Edited by Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2021. pp.viii + 361. $49.95. ISBN: 9781922669605.","authors":"Lyndon Megarrity","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ajph.12937","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":"69 3","pages":"567-568"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50147111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dreams and Schemers: A Political History of Australia. By Frank Bongiorno. Collingwood, La Trobe University Press, 2022, 480 pp, $39.99 (Paperback), ISBN: 9781760640095.","authors":"Jon Piccini","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ajph.12939","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":"69 3","pages":"569-570"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50137474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Consul: An Insider Account from Australia's Diplomatic Frontline. By Ian Kemish. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2022. AU$32.99 pb. ISBN: 9780702263491.","authors":"William Maley","doi":"10.1111/ajph.12936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ajph.12936","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45431,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Politics and History","volume":"69 3","pages":"570-571"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50137492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}